One day in late November , Nick Giovannucci was bored, playing on his iPhone. He was on Tinder, the dating app that matches your profile with eligible others based on shared interests and geography, then asks you to swipe right if you like what you see or left if you don't. If both parties swipe right, it's a match. But something was off. Nick was in Tempe, Ariz. Tucked into bed in Gainesville, Kristina Orlando swiped right on "Nick, 21," too, laughing at one of his selfies with a guitar.
It was a match. She picked only boys who lived far away, so there was never a chance she'd have to meet one in person. Full disclosure here. Kristina was my roommate at UF. I'd taken the semester off to intern at the Tampa Bay Times when she texted me to tell me about her new fling. Kristina noticed Nick's Snapchat username was listed in his Instagram bio, so she added him with no intentions of actually sending him any photos. Nick sent a "snap" asking who this mystery friend was.
Kristina stopped at an intersection. Well this is awkward, she thought. When the text limit on Snapchat photos reached its capacity, Kristina got tired of sending only a few words at a time. She gave Nick her cell number. They talked about their majors, what they did for fun, where they were from.
She learned he was chasing a mechanical engineering degree at Arizona State, was in a rock band and used to be a Boy Scout.
He learned about her family, her obsession with modeling and fashion, and how they had both visited Hawaii. She had never felt a connection this deep with anyone, much less over a Wi-Fi connection. They turned to Skype to video chat. They blushed when they finally saw each other in real time. Brief video chats grew into five-hour Skype calls. Nick would even set his iPhone on his car's dashboard and talk to Kristina during his commute to and from his internship.
